happydalek (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
happydalek) wrote2007-11-15 12:46 pm
happydalek) wrote2007-11-15 12:46 pm
Al Gore...Earth's Champion(?)
I've felt compelled to write a little essay on global warming and religion.
I finally saw An Inconvenient Truth this week. I was surprised to find out that it was as much about Al Gore's personal crusade to save the planet from global warming as it was about actual global warming. And once I cut through most of the pointless "I grew up on a farm and had many family crises that informed my environmental activism" stuff, I have to say, I was more than a little stunned by the statistics Gore highlighted (and by the revelation that, lo! Al Gore actually does have a personality).
One of the things that has stayed with me the most was one of Gore's opening quotes, from Mark Twain: "What gets mankind into trouble isn't what we don't know, it's what we do know that just ain't so." Ironically, this quote can be leveraged at both sides of the global warming debate.
As a prolonged doubter of environmental doom-and-gloom scenarios (what can I say, I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, and the only doom-and-gloom scenario I was told to care about was the coming Apocalypse, which, since I was a fundie, I was also told, meant that I was going to be Raptured before things got bad, anyway), I'm still not entirely ready to concede that ZOMG! Al Gore is right!! WE'RE KILLING THE PLANET RIGHT NOW!! I still like to fall back on the notion that we (as a scientific community) don't have enough detailed data on the history of global environmental change to say FOR SURE exactly how much human activities are altering / damaging the climate. After all, it certainly wasn't human activities that caused any of the ice ages, and they certainly did a lot to change the planet.
However, I am prepared to say that we have enough data from the last few hundred years to know that certain human activities are causing environmental damage (China's water pollution issues, for example,and the hole in the ozone layer). And that it's just plain common sense to realize that the Earth has a finite amount of resources, so a ballooning human population is going to cause increased pressure on those resources. And, as a Christian (though, thank God, no longer a fundamentalist), I believe I have a mandate from God to be a good steward of the planet (as do we all). Additionally, if I go a step farther and say that because (according to Christian doctrine) the universe currently exists in a "fallen" (i.e., not perfect) state due to sin, then why is it such heresy to suggest that our activities might be causing serious damage to the environment?
Bottom line, I believe in balance. I don't think extremes are good on any scale (political, ideological, environmental or religious), and though science is convinced that global warming is happening, is a problem, and is being greatly exacerbated by human activity, it is also possible that, as Mark Twain said (and as often happens in science) we may find out in the future that the situation is not quite as dire as Al Gore believes it is. But I think it is an even greater folly to dismiss all of it out of hand as the product of an "impractical, pie-in-the-sky liberal bias" or some kind of anti-God propaganda concocted by Satan to turn us all into self-loathing atheists (which won't even matter in the long run, since the world is coming to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, according to Mayan calendar).
I think we owe it to each other, and to future generations, to take care of nature, and to use wisely that which God has given us, and I doubt there's a human being alive today that doesn't echo that sentiment. Unfortunately, as incidents like 9/11 have demonstrated, sentiments (and warnings) often cannot initiate change until the consequences are billowing through the air above us and filling body bags at our feet. Are we destroying the planet? As the reliable idiom goes, "better safe than sorry.' Fear of nuclear annihilation was a great motivating factor in resolving the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust. So whether or not Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth is a lasting scientific fact, I think we'd all be better off to behave as if it were.
Just think, whatever we preserve now, we can always deplete, pollute and destroy later. But we've only got one Earth (per universal cycle, at least), and even though it may never be depopulated or destroyed (as Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian fundamentalists believe), wouldn't it be advisable to take the best possible care of it until L. Ron Hubbard returns to guide us up to heaven via playing his Trombone of Serenity (or whatever one's particular apocalyptic beliefs happen to be)? After all, wouldn't we all rather hear "well done, though good and faithful servant," instead of winding up "cast...into outer darkness: [where] there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth"?
One of the things that has stayed with me the most was one of Gore's opening quotes, from Mark Twain: "What gets mankind into trouble isn't what we don't know, it's what we do know that just ain't so." Ironically, this quote can be leveraged at both sides of the global warming debate.
As a prolonged doubter of environmental doom-and-gloom scenarios (what can I say, I was raised as a fundamentalist Christian, and the only doom-and-gloom scenario I was told to care about was the coming Apocalypse, which, since I was a fundie, I was also told, meant that I was going to be Raptured before things got bad, anyway), I'm still not entirely ready to concede that ZOMG! Al Gore is right!! WE'RE KILLING THE PLANET RIGHT NOW!! I still like to fall back on the notion that we (as a scientific community) don't have enough detailed data on the history of global environmental change to say FOR SURE exactly how much human activities are altering / damaging the climate. After all, it certainly wasn't human activities that caused any of the ice ages, and they certainly did a lot to change the planet.
However, I am prepared to say that we have enough data from the last few hundred years to know that certain human activities are causing environmental damage (China's water pollution issues, for example,and the hole in the ozone layer). And that it's just plain common sense to realize that the Earth has a finite amount of resources, so a ballooning human population is going to cause increased pressure on those resources. And, as a Christian (though, thank God, no longer a fundamentalist), I believe I have a mandate from God to be a good steward of the planet (as do we all). Additionally, if I go a step farther and say that because (according to Christian doctrine) the universe currently exists in a "fallen" (i.e., not perfect) state due to sin, then why is it such heresy to suggest that our activities might be causing serious damage to the environment?
Bottom line, I believe in balance. I don't think extremes are good on any scale (political, ideological, environmental or religious), and though science is convinced that global warming is happening, is a problem, and is being greatly exacerbated by human activity, it is also possible that, as Mark Twain said (and as often happens in science) we may find out in the future that the situation is not quite as dire as Al Gore believes it is. But I think it is an even greater folly to dismiss all of it out of hand as the product of an "impractical, pie-in-the-sky liberal bias" or some kind of anti-God propaganda concocted by Satan to turn us all into self-loathing atheists (which won't even matter in the long run, since the world is coming to an end on Dec. 21, 2012, according to Mayan calendar).
I think we owe it to each other, and to future generations, to take care of nature, and to use wisely that which God has given us, and I doubt there's a human being alive today that doesn't echo that sentiment. Unfortunately, as incidents like 9/11 have demonstrated, sentiments (and warnings) often cannot initiate change until the consequences are billowing through the air above us and filling body bags at our feet. Are we destroying the planet? As the reliable idiom goes, "better safe than sorry.' Fear of nuclear annihilation was a great motivating factor in resolving the Cold War without a nuclear holocaust. So whether or not Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth is a lasting scientific fact, I think we'd all be better off to behave as if it were.
Just think, whatever we preserve now, we can always deplete, pollute and destroy later. But we've only got one Earth (per universal cycle, at least), and even though it may never be depopulated or destroyed (as Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian fundamentalists believe), wouldn't it be advisable to take the best possible care of it until L. Ron Hubbard returns to guide us up to heaven via playing his Trombone of Serenity (or whatever one's particular apocalyptic beliefs happen to be)? After all, wouldn't we all rather hear "well done, though good and faithful servant," instead of winding up "cast...into outer darkness: [where] there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth"?